The Light is Gone
by Cloud Sage
Summary: A collection of Shinji's dreams.
1. Exposure

Exposure

Once Shinji started piloting EVA, his dreams changed. Not the themes of them, but the content. There were still the good ones, the bad ones, and the ones which kept him awake at night, but the new dreams seemed sharper than the ones he used to have.

Piloting EVA was such a new experience that his unconscious mind seemed to constantly dwell on it, as if trying to sort out his EVA interactions while he slept.

The first dream about EVA occurred several days after his disastrous first attempt at being a pilot. The nights prior to the dream he could not remember dreaming of anything else.

In the dream he sat in evangelion, in the midst of Tokyo 3 as he waited. He was not sure what he was waiting for and as the minutes slowly passed by, Shinji studied his surroundings. Through the video screen he could see the taller, movable buildings of the city, which were currently tucked into the ground. The sky was a hazy gray color from the endless summer and the endless heat. As he studied the sky, Shinji tried to remember what color it had been before the constant heat of summer. He was quite sure that the sky had been a much more brilliant blue than it was now.

Some birds darted across his line of sight and his thoughts about the color of the sky scattered. He turned his head in order to watch the birds fly away and was shocked to find that there was something almost right behind him.

Shinji's heart started to pound painfully as he realized the creature waiting behind him was an angel. He tried to suck in a deeper breath and started to cough as he drew in too much LCL. After the initial shock of finding the angel right behind him, Shinji tried to quickly turn around so he could face the angel instead of having his back to it.

When he tried to turn around, his movement and the EVA's movement seemed out of sync and he tripped over his feet. The EVA fell slowly to the ground.

With agonizing slowness, Shinji lifted his head up to see if the angel had moved. It had not moved at all and this made him even more afraid. As his heart continued to pound erratically he frantically willed the evangelion to get up and move but there was no response.

While Shinji was trying to make his EVA move, the angel had changed positions and now held one hand out with the palm facing the evangelion. Shinji had not noticed this new position and was still desperately trying to get up.

Shinji did notice the angel when the armor started melting.

The armor on the hands was the first part which disappeared. It melted off the EVA like wax running down a candle as the other pieces of armor also started to melt. By the time the armor plates on the shoulders started melting Shinji had observed the damage to the hands and could only shake in fear as the rest of the armor rapidly melted.

When the video screen went blank there was no more light in the capsule and the only sounds Shinji could hear were his thudding heartbeat and swish of LCL as he shivered.

His mind screamed at him to move or to somehow escape the EVA, but he was locked in place by his fear. When a pinpoint of light appeared near his feet he knew that the angel had melted the EVA all the way to the core. The LCL started to drain out as the point of light became larger and larger.

Suddenly, the angel was right in front of Shinji as a huge, gaping hole in the EVA opened up where all of the armor had melted away.

The angel started to slowly reach out towards Shinji.

Just before the angel was within reach of Shinji, he woke up.

He bit his lip to contain the scream that wanted to escape him as he shakily gathered up his blankets from where he had kicked them to the end of the bed. Even though it was hot, he piled the blankets on top of himself and scooted as close to wall as possible.

He felt so… exposed.


	2. Harmony

Harmony

Shinji loved to play the cello. He had not loved it when he was first beginning to play, but now that he had been playing for several years, he found it to be quite enjoyable. The music which he played would often linger in his mind hours after he had finished playing. Occasionally it followed him all the way into his dreams.

Tonight was such a night. In this particular dream he was outside, seated in a wooden chair and surrounded by trees in what appeared to be a park.

His dream self noted nothing strange about this setting. He shut his eyes as he thought of which song to play. After running through all of the music he knew by heart, he finally settled on one of his favorites, _Cannon in D_.

He carefully placed the fingers of his left hand on the fingerboard of the cello and with the right he started to draw the bow across the finely tuned strings. The slow, even strokes of the bow made him think about why he enjoyed playing this song so much. He turned the question over in his mind for a short time and decided he enjoyed the song because it was soothing and predictable. Exactly the opposite of his current life.

Asuka's sudden intrusion into Shinji's fragile order of life had left him constantly off balance. Anything and everything he did seemed to annoy her, and he could never figure out exactly what she wanted from him. As he was thinking about this, a new set of music joined his in addition to the soft sounds of birdsong and wind.

Shinji opened his eyes and his bow stuttered to a halt as he realized that it was Asuka who had appeared beside him and was the source of the music. He shrank back into his chair as he waited for the half-expected insult to come his way. After several minutes of only continued music and not a single insult, Shinji shrugged to himself and picked up the beat again.

The instrument Asuka was playing was a viola and the sound meshed well with Shinji's cello. As they played together Shinji thought to himself that they were only missing Rei; if she was there then all three pilots would be together.

His gaze traveled around him as he searched for the expected pilot of unit zero. After several minutes he spotted her walking through a grove of trees. She moved fluidly towards him and soon was next to Shinji and Asuka. She put her instrument under her chin and started to blend in her music with the other two. Rei's violin, Shinji's cello, and Asuka's viola all played together and blended to form the same song.

As Shinji slowly started to relax in the presence of the other two pilots, he enjoyed the rare feeling of peace which came over him. It was not very often that all three of them could be in the same place or even the same room without one of them getting angry at the other. Even their breathing seemed to be in sync. Shinji could hear the gentle movement of their breath on either side of him.

Once again he closed his eyes and concentrated on the music. _Cannon in D_ was a piece which could be played by a single person or it could be played by several people. Both ways were beautiful, Shinji thought to himself, but when several people played the song together it had a greater depth than when the song was played by a single person.

He opened his eyes again when the sound of footsteps crunching through leaves caught his attention. He had been expecting another person he knew to join them with yet another instrument, but the person who was walking through the leaves towards them was not carrying anything.

Shinji watched carefully as the older man with dark brown hair came close to them and sat on the ground to listen to their music. Shinji lowered his eyes to his feet and studied the man out of his lowered lids. There was something terribly familiar about this person, but Shinji was unable to figure out what it was.

The strange man continued to sit and listen to their music as other people began walking through the trees towards them. The ages of the people varied, but all of them had that strange familiar quality which Shinji was unable to put his finger on.

He watched as they all came close and sat to listen to the music. An old man with a baby, an even older man with white hair, and a younger man who looked like he was in his late twenties. When a boy about Shinji's own age finally came close by, Shinji was finally able to figure out why they seemed so familiar. All of the people coming to listen to the music seemed to look very similar to Shinji except their ages were different.

Once he realized this Shinji stopped playing and looked on in amazement at all of the people still streaming into the clearing. The two girls on the side of him continued to play. Three of the people from the small crowd were making their way towards the front of the group.

The three young boys stopped in front of Shinji.

"Err, who are all of you?" Shinji asked.

"We're you" the first boy answered boldly. "We're each a different part of your mind." "I'm Confidence, this is Reliable" he pointed at the second boy, "and this is Insecurity" he pointed at the third boy who was trying to hide behind the second boy. "All of us think you play music more often." The other two nodded.

"It brings everyone together" said the second boy as he indicated the crowd.

"And we enjoy it" said the last boy softly.

Before Shinji could reply an intense ray of light suddenly filled his vision. He held a hand up to block the light and found that he was no longer dreaming. It was the real sun which had woken him up. He let his hand slowly fall to cover his eyes as he gathered together the remaining fragments of the dream.

Harmony, he decided, was kind of a nice feeling.


	3. Hedgehog at School

Hedgehog at School

A/N: This isn't really one dream it's more of a series of recurring dreams with alternate endings.

He was in school again. No matter which school he went to it was all the same. His subconscious agreed with him and when he dreamed about schools they would meld together, forming a giant building where even the students seemed to blend together. Not that they were very different in real life. After he moved in with Misato, the only difference was in the number of people. Shinji was unsure if this was a good thing. On one hand it was good since it meant less noise and crowding. On the other hand it meant he could not disappear.

His last school had been very large. Due to some recent earthquakes, two schools had been combined since one had been damaged beyond repair. Each class often had 30 or 40 people and most of the time it was easy to sit in the back of the room and be completely ignored by both the teachers and the students.

Except when he dreamed.

Even though in the waking world his teachers hardly ever called on him to answer a question, it seemed to happen quite often in the dream world. All of these dreams started the same. He would be sitting near the back of a classroom. Sometimes the classroom was small. Sometimes it was as big as an auditorium. And sometimes it was an odd combination of classroom and auditorium. In whatever sort of room he happened to be sitting in, he would be called on.

When he was called on several things could happen. He might know the answer, but his muscles would refuse to work and he would be unable to speak. Or everyone in the room would turn to look at him and he would freeze, overcome with the intensity of their stares.

Sometimes he would wake up from the dream with a dry mouth and the sheets soaked with sweat.

Sometimes the dream would continue.

When Shinji was in elementary school a teacher had once called on him to answer a question which he did not know the answer to. After a minute of Shinji's blank silence, the teacher had sharply chastised him for being unable to answer the question. Shinji's unfortunate answer to this had been to start crying.

If Shinji did not wake up, then he would inevitably start crying in the dreams. His fellow students would jeer and point at him, which only made Shinji feel worse. No one ever came to his rescue; not even the teacher who would stand silently and watch. When Shinji could bear it no longer, he would get up and run from the room.

In one of his more memorable school dreams, after he had run from the classroom he had entered a hallway packed with people. Before he could avoid a collision several people passed right through him. He gasped and backed against a wall which was fortunately still solid to his touch. He watched people pass him for several moments then tentatively reached out a hand to see if it would pass through people. It did and Shinji looked at his hand in amazement.

Instead of being frightened by this new development as other people may have been, Shinji was very relieved. After the harshness of his outburst of emotion back in the classroom he had exactly what he wanted: the ability to be invisible to others, but still be among them at the same time. Shinji's relationships with others had often suffered because of his overly conscientious nature. Being invisible gave him the power to be himself among others without their judgment.

His invisible dream self wandered among the halls of the school and listened to conversations at random. This was entertaining for a while, but Shinji eventually grew tired of it. Just as he started to notice his waning interest, everything started to fade and he woke up.

After every dream about school, the same thought always crossed Shinji's mind. Why,he wondered, did he have to go back to school when he had just left it?


	4. The Light is Gone

The Light is Gone

The first thing he noticed about the landscape was how barren it was. The ground was mostly dry dirt and only a few tufts of water parched grass. There were a couple of trees in his line of sight, but they were mostly stunted and had few leaves. The entire scene looked like an old painting left too long where the sun had leeched the colors from it.

The sky was the only place which held any color at all. Shinji had never seen a sky with such an unusual color. It was a deep red, but with an edge of dark purple near the horizon. Usually the sight of such colors during a sunrise or sunset would have an uplifting effect on him, but this sky just made him uneasy. He gazed upward as he tried to discover the source of the color and was disconcerted to find he could see neither moon, nor sun, nor stars.

After studying his surroundings he anxiously shifted from one foot to the other as he tried to remember what he was doing here. Was he looking for something? Someone? He surveyed the bleak landscape again as he tried to put his thoughts in order. Why would he come to a place like this to look for something? He slowly turned around in a full circle, but still saw nothing. The strange color of the sky was still making him nervous and he decided to start walking both to ease his nerves and maybe to find what he was looking for.

He chose a random direction and started walking. Even with his slow pace, his footfalls kicked up small clouds of dust from the dry ground. With nothing interesting to look at except the eerie sky, Shinji's mind started to turn inward.

Rei. He didn't understand her. She seemed to get along well with his father, but not with anyone else. Or rather she did not respond to anyone else. Her brief smiles after they successfully completed a mission were as rare as her words. She seemed like a nice person, but her statuesque exterior was completely unrevealing. Nevertheless Shinji was still drawn to her and found her intriguing. There was something familiar about her which he could never manage to put his finger on.

Still moving slowly across the dry ground, he was startled to see the faintest beginnings of a path. He squatted down to examine it. The shallow depression which marked the path was surprisingly smooth. Shinji could see no evidence of what had made the trail or that anyone had used it. Another odd feature of the path was the small branches coming off of it, almost like the roots of a tree. Although he was puzzled by these things Shinji still decided to follow it. A path was a path and it had to lead somewhere.

He stepped onto the path and returned to his thoughts. Asuka. He understood her even less than Rei. Sometimes it seemed like she wanted to be around him and other times she acted as if he was the most disgusting thing she had ever seen. His easy agreeableness and willingness to go along with what others wanted him to do seemed to greatly irritate her. If he remained silent when she got angry at him, she would only get angrier. If he argued back at her she would argue louder. He frowned and the red sky darkened slightly. It seemed like nothing he did could meet her approval. Maybe she was right. Maybe it was always his fault.

He stuffed his hands in his pockets as his mind veered away from Asuka. What about Misato? She seemed happy with him most of the time and praised him when he did well, but it was her cold disappointment which burned brightest in his memory. He acted indifferent when she chastised him, but it affected him more than he let show. The sky darkened again and Shinji took no notice of it.

He stopped walking and turned his focus outward to see if the landscape had changed at all. The immediate surroundings seemed unchanged to him and he raised his gaze to the far away horizon. In the distance he could discern something which looked like a shapeless blob the same color as the ground. He squinted, but the shape did not resolve itself into anything familiar. At least it was something different.

He started walking faster than he had before as he made his way towards the shapeless object. As he hurried along the path, he noticed it was being joined smaller paths. In addition to this, the path he was on was becoming deeper and wider. He put these observations in the back of his mind and continued onward.

After a short period of time had passed he noticed that the distant object did not seem to be getting any larger. He paused uncertainly. He could turn back. Would that do him any good? Between the unknown and a visible goal, he chose the visible goal. He sighed and started and started walking again.

His father. Just like the destination he was trying to reach, the harder he strived the more distant his father seemed. What had he done to be so unlikable? Why did his father consistently ignore him? When he did interact with his father why was it so difficult?

Was it his fault? Was Shinji himself to blame?

He slowed down as unpleasant thoughts overtook him. His father. Rei. Asuka. Misato. His classmates. The technicians who worked on EVA. Always observing him. Watching him make the wrong decisions, the wrong choices, and the wrong actions. Why did he pilot EVA? To please people? To save people? To save people who hated him? What was the point? Why was he even alive?

He tripped and fell close by a rock which he had not noticed before. Without brushing the dust off of himself, he dragged his body onto the rock and put his head in his hands. Words no longer entered his thoughts as his negative emotions took over. Fear. Anger. Hate. Sadness. Despair. One final thought clawed its way through his tangled emotions.

_I wish I didn't exist. _

With that thought, the rock Shinji was sitting on shattered. He let out a scream and started to fall. Instead of falling downward as he had expected, he started to fall upward into the sky which had become an unpleasant black red. As he fell upward, the tiny part of his mind which still contained rational thought noted that the paths which he had been following looked like the blood vessels in a human body. The rock which had just shattered was at the place where the heart would have been located. He continued to fall upward, but eventually fainted as terror overcame him. He embraced the pleasant darkness which unconsciousness brought with it.

When he woke up in the morning he could remember nothing of his dream.


	5. Final Chapter Light 'n Fluffy

Light n' Fluffy

Most of the time Shinji found school to be somewhat boring, but yesterday he had been rapt with attention. They were learning about snow. Or, more broadly, they were learning about weather patterns and the influence of the second impact on the climate. But it was the snow which really fascinated Shinji. He had seen pictures of snow and even the occasional movie, but he had never experienced it.

Usually within ten minutes of the start of Shinji's first class, heads were on desks and about a quarter of the class was sleeping peacefully, lulled by the monotonous sound of their teacher's voice. Yesterday everyone had stayed awake on account of the beautiful slides of crystalline snowflakes their teacher had remembered to bring in. As he talked about crystal structure and weather patterns, Shinji's teacher flicked through the many different forms which snowflakes could take. Shinji was amazed by the enormous variety which he saw on the slides. For the rest of the day the beautiful snowflakes stayed in his mind and they were the last thing he thought about before he fell asleep.

******

Snow! He pressed his face against the glass of his bedroom window in order to see it better. The fluffy white flakes were drifting slowly downward and had covered most of the small patch of grass near the parking lot. He abandoned the project he had been working on at his desk and ran to the closet to find his coat and gloves. After several minutes of searching he found what he was looking for. The dark blue coat and gloves were a little musty from sitting in the closet for a long time, but he pulled them on anyway. He stuffed himself into the coat and gloves and hurried outside.

When he reached the bottom of the apartment stairs he gazed in wonder at the pure white world around him. His breath came out in clouds and he breathed slowly and watched the white mist fade into the cold air. The way the snow covered everything gave the whole world a new, fresh look, even the concrete sidewalks and the metallic cars. In fact, the dusting of snow on top of the tan concrete reminded Shinji strongly of freshly baked sugar cookies.

In addition to the snow on the ground, there were long icicles hanging from the cars and the fence near the parking lot. Their muted glittering caught Shinji's eye and he walked slowly towards them as he tried to catch snowflakes with his gloved hands. His shoes made muffled sounds as he worked his way across the small patch of grass to the frozen fence.

Once he arrived at the fence, he reached out to touch one of the dangling icicles. He must have used too much force or the icicles were more delicate than they appeared because as soon as he touched it, the icicle dropped to the ground with a muffled clink. The musical noise amused him and he reached out to break off another icicle. Clink. He smiled and ran his hand down the entire row of icicles. Clinkclinkclinkclinkclinkclink. For a while he amused himself with breaking off every icicle he could find near him.

After the icicles were gone he decided he would try making a snowman. He made the base with a sphere of snow and placed the third and second spheres on top of the first one. The eyes he made with two small rocks he found on the ground and he made the mouth by carving a thin line with his smallest finger. The nose was a little harder. When he had seen pictures of children making snowmen, the snowmen often had carrots for their noses, but Shinji was quite sure that Misato would not have something as healthy as a carrot in her refrigerator. After thoughtfully looking at the materials around him, he picked up one of the icicles he had broken off and used that as a nose. After he placed the icicle, he stepped back to admire his work.

One side of the snowman's head looked a little larger than the other side so he broke off a chunk of snow to make the head more even. He was about to throw the snow to the ground when he realized that he had never tasted snow before. He dubiously held the chunk of snow close to his eyes. It should just taste like water, right? Or maybe since it was frozen it would taste like the shaved ice he had one time in the summer. He eagerly jammed the piece of snow into his mouth expecting a cool, crisp flavor.

Instead, the taste of the snow reminded him of cotton. He took the rest of the chunk out of his mouth and tossed it to the ground. Maybe his glove had made the snow taste odd. He took one glove off and reached down for a fresh scoop of snow. He tasted it and wrinkled his nose in dismay when this piece tasted like the first one. For several minutes he tasted snow from various locations around him, but all the pieces had that same strange taste. He decided to try one last piece, but as he brought the snow close to his face it tickled his nose and he sneezed and woke up.

He blinked in confusion for a moment as he realized that the snow was just a dream. Unfortunately the taste was not. Scattered about his bed were pieces of stuffing. He sighed as he realized that he had been trying to eat his pillow.


End file.
